As the city undergoes a redevelopment boom, separate lifts are becoming commonplace in the city. Scholars argue it represents a violation of workers’ rights.
It is not just delivery workers who are barred from using the main elevators in large apartment complexes with several lifts. Even domestic workers, who are regular visitors to high-rise apartments, are subjected to the same segregation.
“It is humiliating and hurtful,” said a domestic worker in Lokhandwala Complex. “In the society that I work at, dogs are allowed in the regular elevators, but workers must take the service elevator. Does this mean we’re less than animals?”
“Most people working as domestic workers or deliverymen come from the Bahujan community,” said a postdoctoral scholar from an Indian Institute of Technology who has conducted research on caste in Mumbai. “Separate lifts are an attempt to create distance from outcaste bodies, as there is a lot of anxiety about spatial density in cities. This is how the spatial segregation from earlier times continues in cities today.”
05/08/2025